As millions globally protest about the accelerating climate crisis, we look at how retailers are playing their part in addressing one of the most pressing problems facing humanity.

Inspired by the work of activists such as 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, millions of people globally are today walking out of schools, universities, homes and businesses to march for urgent action on the climate crisis.

Lush closed in support of the climate change strike

Lush closed in support of the climate change strike

As the protests began, the world’s biggest etailer issued a clarion call to business.

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos’ pledge to make his etail empire carbon neutral by 2040 – a decade ahead of goals agreed in the 2016 Paris climate accord – is a major step.

As some governments vacillate or even roll back regulations on climate protection, businesses internationally are increasingly taking the lead.

Retail Week looks at what some of the industry’s biggest names are doing on climate and sustainability.

Marks & Spencer

The high street stalwart may be enduring mixed fortunes, particularly its embattled fashion business, but Marks & Spencer can hold its head up when it comes to sustainability.

M&S has had its ‘Plan A’ strategy in place since January 2007, when it was introduced by then chief executive Stuart Rose. The strategy has helped turn M&S into one of the UK’s most sustainable retailers – it claimed the crown as the first major retailer to become carbon neutral back in 2012.

Since Plan A was launched, M&S has gone on to achieve zero-waste-to-landfill status and switched to renewable electricity, as it sought to become carbon neutral across all of its UK stores, warehouses and offices.

More widely, customers can track the provenance of beef, seafood and wool products across M&S’ global supply chain.

M&S’ grocery business has also launched pilots aimed at cutting down on plastic, including a take-back scheme launched in January. It pledged to roll the initiative out nationally by the end of this year, and to have all of its packaging “widely recycled” by 2022, with the aim of creating a zero-waste business by 2025.

Aldi

Aldi became one of the first grocers to effectively achieve carbon neutrality in January this year, 12 months ahead of schedule.

It said it had offset its carbon emissions by investing in credits equivalent to the 160,000 tonnes it emitted in 2018. The grocer has also switched to 100% renewable energy, upgraded its fridges and freezers to run more efficiently, and installed onsite solar panels.

The retailer has unveiled a number of schemes across its various markets aimed at addressing sustainability issues. In the UK, Aldi announced in March that it was aiming to source 100% of its soy products sustainably by 2025 which it says will mitigate deforestation in areas where soy plants are grown. 

More widely, Aldi unveiled a trial in July to remove plastic packaging from packets of toilet roll, which it said would save more than 900 tonnes of plastic a year.

Aldi is also targeting the removal of hard-to-recycle plastic from its food range by the end of 2020, and a 25% reduction in plastic use overall by the end of 2023.

Amazon

Overnight, the boss of the online giant Jeff Bezos unveiled the Climate Pledge, committing to make his business carbon neutral by 2040 and meeting the Paris climate accord goals a decade early.

Amazon was the first signatory to the pledge, organised in partnership with campaign group Global Optimism.

“We’re done being in the middle of the herd on this issue,” said Bezos. “We’ve decided to use our size and scale to make a difference.

“If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon – which delivers more than 10 billion items a year – can meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early, then any company can.”

The pledge commits Amazon to “measure and report greenhouse-gas emissions on a regular basis”, “implement decarbonisation strategies in line with the Paris Agreement” and “neutralise any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent and socially beneficial offsets” by 2040.

To meet its pledge, Amazon says it has ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles to reduce fuel consumption, the first of which will enter service in 2021.

Bezos said that, at present, 40% of the energy used by the etail Goliath comes from renewable sources, but that will rise to 100% by 2030.

Inditex

The fashion industry has increasingly been under scrutiny on issues ranging from ethical sourcing of materials, to the ecological effects of last-mile deliveries.

Along with being a signatory to the UN charter pledging to become carbon neutral by 2050, the Zara owner was also one of 32 founding members of the ‘Fashion Pact’ initiative, unveiled at the G7 summit in Biarritz earlier this year.

The pact pledges signatories to halt climate change, restore biodiversity and protect the oceans.

The fashion titan also unveiled its own “transformational” sustainability agenda in June, designed to cut the use of non-recycled materials and eliminate single-use plastics across its stable of brands.

Inditex is seeking to eliminate the use of plastic bags across its fascias, such as Pull & Bear and Massimo Dutti, by 2020; remove all single-use plastics in its packaging by 2023; and ensure that 100% of all cotton, linen and polyester used in garments is either organic, sustainably sourced or recycled by 2023.

Tesco

The UK’s biggest retailer was the first FTSE 100 business to pledge to become carbon neutral by 2050, in line with the Paris accord. Since the date of the Paris Agreement, Tesco has succeeded in reducing carbon emissions across its business by 31%, and sources 58% of its electricity from renewable sources. It is aiming to source 65% of its energy from renewable sources by the end of 2020, and 100% by 2030. 

Along with its carbon targets, the retailer has also responded to criticism of the wider grocery industry’s reliance on plastics.

Writing in The Guardian at the end of August, Tesco boss Dave Lewis set out his vision for “a new national framework” for cutting down on plastic packaging.

Lewis wrote: “The proliferation of plastic in society remains a challenge, and something everyone involved in the consumer-goods industry must tackle.”

Off the back of the piece, Tesco has said it will “reserve the right not to list” products with too much non-recyclable plastic from next year.

Tesco has also launched a 10-store pilot of new technology that will allow it to recycle all forms of plastic packaging.

The grocery giant has committed to making all of its packaging recyclable by 2025.

H&M

H&M was one of a number of high-profile fashion brands to pledge to become 100% carbon neutral by 2050, when it signed the United Nations Fashion Industry for Climate Change charter.

Earlier in the summer, as a way of reducing emissions from ocean shipping in its supply chain, H&M said it would be taking part in a pilot using a new carbon-neutral ocean fuel, with global logistics company Maersk. 

It has also been active in areas around sustainability, launching its 10th Conscious Exclusive collection last week featuring garments made from recycled brass and zinc, as well as waste cotton.

Creative adviser at the retailer, Ann-Sofie Johansson, noted at the launch: “It’s vital that H&M keeps pushing the boundaries of future-facing fashion, proving to the world that glamour and sustainability go hand in hand.”

In its home country, H&M has also been making strides to make its online shopping channels more sustainable, too. Earlier this month, it announced a partnership with a Finnish packaging firm, RePack, for reusable delivery pouches.

The Swedish-based giant was also one of the signatories to the Fashion Pact.

Lush

The cruelty-free cosmetics brand has long been at the forefront of ethics and sustainability in retail.

Earlier this year, the beauty retailer was awarded its first carbon-neutral certification for its use of cork packaging. The so-called ‘cork pots’ – designed to hold bars of shampoo – are made from Portugese bark and are 100% reusable and biodegradable. 

The packaging was also found to “sequester more than 33 times its weight in carbon dioxide” – which charity the Carbon Trust said was equivalent to removing 1.2kg of carbon emissions from the atmosphere each. 

In support of the global climate strikes today, Lush shut stores across the world, along with its headquarters, manufacturing facilities and online platform.

A statement on its website read: “Young people have recently taken the lead in climate-awareness raising – crying out for those responsible and those in power to deal with the crisis immediately without any more delay and give them back hope for their futures.

“There can be no call stronger than our children sincerely asking us to do the right thing. For this reason, Lush will stop our business-as-usual for the strike. Our tills will switch off, our shops will shut, our website will go onto a low-energy holding page and our factories will come to a standstill. We hear our children and we stand with them.”

John Lewis

The wider John Lewis Partnership pledged in March that it would look to reduce its operational carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 at the latest.

It said it would have removed a third of carbon from its operations by 2028 and would aim to have a totally zero-carbon transport fleet by 2045, with all shops being carbon neutral by 2050.

Meanwhile, Waitrose has been expanding its ‘Unpacked’ refillable packaging trial following the success of the original pilot in its Oxford store.

The scheme sees stores fitted with dedicated refillable zones – with dispensers for dried products, frozen ‘pick and mix’, coffee, wine and beers, plus laundry detergents and washing-up liquids, as well as a range of loosely packed fruit and vegetables. The scheme has meant that Waitrose has been able to remove more than 200 individual products from their plastic packaging. 

The Body Shop

Beauty specialist The Body Shop is rightly proud of its activist heritage.

Emblazoned across the window of its newly refurbished Oxford Street store is the slogan: ‘Speaking Out Since ‘76” – the year the ethical beauty retailer’s founder, Anita Roddick, opened her first store in Brighton.

In 2016, as part of its 40th anniversary, The Body Shop unveiled 14 sustainability targets for 2020, which include powering 100% of stores with renewable or carbon-neutral energy sources and ensuring 70% of total product packaging does not contain fossil fuels. 

Director of sustainability at The Body Shop, Christopher Davis, says the retailer “offset all energy from our international stores, our two UK global office, and our UK distribution centre” and runs a carbon balancing programme in partnership with the World Land Trust. 

All the fixtures in the new-look store, which opened earlier this week, are “upcycled, recycled or reclaimed” and it features a refill station for shower gels.

In a bid to harken back to its roots, The Body Shop has also introduced what it calls an ‘Activist Corner’ where shoppers can take selfies making sustainability pledges and write down issues that they want the retailer to tackle.

The retailer has also committed to transporting many of its hero products and ingredients – such as tea tree oil, charcoal and shea butter – by rail and boat rather than air freight, in a bid to reduce carbon footprints.

Speaking to Retail Week, a spokeswoman for the retailer said it would be unveiling a “comprehensive sustainability agenda” in 2021. The retailer has also since become ‘B Corp’ certified - which is awarded to businesses that “meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance”. 

Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s says it has already reduced its absolute carbon emissions by 24% against a 2005 baseline and has pledged to reduce that by 30% by 2020.

A spokesman said Sainsbury’s has yet to commit to a target for carbon neutrality. 

It has invested more than £200m in ongoing energy and carbon-reductions initiatives, such as installing solar panels on roofs and switching to natural refrigerants.

One of the areas in which Sainsbury’s has sought to put itself out ahead of its competitors is the use of plastic.

Last Friday, Sainsbury’s committed to halving its plastic packaging by 2025, which it said would “help drive change across the industry”. Earlier in June, boss Mike Coupe also said the grocer would become the first in the UK to scrap plastic bag usage for loose fruit, vegetables and bakery items, starting this month.

The grocer was also one of the signatories to the British Retail Consortium’s ‘Better Retail Better World’ initiative, which pledges to tackle global challenges highlighted by the UN, including modern slavery, sustainable economic growth and climate change.

It also signed up to a Government initiative in May, pushed by then Environment Secretary Michael Gove, to halve the amount of food waste by 2030.

Patagonia

Along with Lush, outdoor-clothing retailer Patagonia closed its shops in support of climate-change strike action.

The retailer said it would close its flagship store in Manchester and its store in Dublin, Ireland, along with every Patagonia store and office facility globally today to “enable all employees to join their local strike”.

General manager of the brand’s European operations, Ryan Gellert, said: “The climate crisis is a human issue – affecting all of us. We are inspired by the youth activists who have led a global movement, and Patagonia is calling for urgent and decisive action for people and our home planet.

“As a global business, we will be closing our stores on 20th and 27th September, striking with the youth activists and calling for governments around the world to take action.”